Editorial June 29, 1912 Issue

PATRIOTISM

John B. Willis

The condition of public thought today, as indicated by the general unrest of the people of the United States and many other countries, offers a forcible suggestion that nothing is more needed in all the world than a nobler concept and practice of patriotism. Despite all the trying experience imposed upon us by our modern patriot days, we all know that none but a cynic could have said that "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels;" that the sentiment which is usually so unfittingly expressed has brought a glint of light even to the darkest days of human history, and that he indeed is "little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon."

Were the scenes of all past heroic deeds duly marked, the sun would never set on these crowded monuments of manliness, and yet who that has studied human history and is acquainted with human impulse can fail to realize how generally patriotism is tainted with some form and degree of selfishness, how narrow it is in its vision and hope for good, how wholly unlike that genuine all-inclusive and lenda-hand spirit of brotherhood, that desire for all-good-for-all, which ever impelled the Master, and which finds such tremendous reemphasis in Christian Science.

To rejoice over one's possessions of good, and to keep ever green the memory of the struggles, the sacrifices, and the achievements which have insured the stability and perpetuity of these possessions, is indeed praiseworthy, but if my gratitude and enthusiasm is thoughtful only for the liberty and well-being of "me and mine," if it has little regard and less longing for the well-being of all mankind, then its unchrist-likeness and unideality appear. I have not yet attained that larger view without which my show of patriotism is but a parody, an expression of local clannishness, perchance, which at its best is but a sense of narrow nationalism.

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